2 Responses to De-Extinction Conference

1. lenrosen4 says:

   June 23, 2013 at 8:09 pm

   The idea of humans resurrecting extinct animals says more about the nonsense that sometimes accompanies science. To what purpose would reviving mammoths serve? Will we create a mammoth preserve somewhere in the Arctic? Or is this just a circus act akin to PT Barnum?

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2. sharonstjoan says:

   June 24, 2013 at 4:00 am

   The basic problem with de-extinction, as alluded to in the previous comment, is this. Where are the animals going to live? Horrifyingly, those who have “resurrected” them, may simply wish to keep them around in laboratory conditions, to study them – the “very best” laboratory conditions, no doubt. But even in a scenario where one wants to re-create wild conditions, there is simply nowhere for them to live. A wild animal, without a wild habitat, has no life worth living. Point number two: Where are the parents of this animal who are going to teach their baby what food is edible, how to escape predators, how to have an identity as part of their own species so they can find a mate, how to interact socially with their fellows, how to live in a herd or a flock (which won’t exist by the way), or how to be a successful lone hunter? The life of a wild animal is extraordinarily complex, it has evolved over millions of years. You cannot just re-create a genetically viable animal — and put it out in a parking lot, or in a jungle, or in the wilderness, or subject it to imprisonment in life-long captivity.

   A wild animal must be taught survival skills and must live in a social context appropriate to that animal’s nature. Otherwise, the animal simply has no life. Animals become extinct because the conditions in which they can thrive have ceased to exist (whether this is caused by nature or by humans). Subjecting animals to be “revived” to live lives that are not really lives at all in any real sense is a form of cruelty.

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